US judge orders hundreds of sites “de-indexed” from Google, Facebook

Luxury goods maker Chanel has convinced a judge to order the seizure of …

After a series of one-sided hearings, luxury goods maker Chanel has won recent court orders against hundreds of websites trafficking in counterfeit luxury goods. A federal judge in Nevada has agreed that Chanel can seize the domain names in question and transfer them all to US-based registrar GoDaddy. The judge also ordered "all Internet search engines" and "all social media websites"—explicitly naming Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google—to "de-index" the domain names and to remove them from any search results.

The case has been a remarkable one. Concerned about counterfeiting, Chanel has filed a joint suit in Nevada against nearly 700 domain names that appear to have nothing in common. When Chanel finds more names, it simply uses the same case and files new requests for more seizures. (A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

That was good enough for Judge Kent Dawson to order the names seized and transferred to GoDaddy, where they would all redirect to a page serving notice of the seizure. In addition, a total ban on search engine indexing was ordered, one which neither Bing nor Google appears to have complied with yet.

Missing from the ruling is any discussion of the Internet's global nature; the judge shows no awareness that the domains in question might not even be registered in this country, for instance, and his ban on search engine and social media indexing apparently extends to the entire world. (And, when applied to US-based companies like Twitter, apparently compels them to censor the links globally rather than only when accessed by people in the US.) Indeed, a cursory search through the list of offending domains turns up poshmoda.ws, a site registered in Germany. The German registrar has not yet complied with the US court order, though most other domain names on the list are .com or .net names and have been seized.

The US government has made similar domain name seizures through Operation In Our Sites, grabbing US-based domains that end in .com and .net even when the sites are located abroad. Such moves by themselves would seem to do little to stop piracy in the long-term; they simply teach would-be miscreants to register future domain names in other countries.

Why wait for SOPA?

"I'm sympathetic to the 'whack-a-mole' problem rights owners face, but this relief is just extraordinarily broad and is on shaky procedural grounds," he writes. "I'm not sure how this court can direct a registry to change a domain name's registrar of record or Google to de-list a site, but the court does so anyway. This is probably the most problematic aspect of the court's orders."

Rightsholders have asked Congress to write these provisions (and a few more) into law, and they have pushed for government seizures like those from Operation In Our Sites (which just seized another batch of new domains this last weekend). But as Balasubramani points out, cases like Chanel's show that rightsholders can already get what they want from judges, and they can go after far more sites more quickly than the government.

"The fight against SOPA [the Stop Online Piracy Act] may be a red herring in some ways," he notes, "since IP plaintiffs are fashioning very similar remedies in court irrespective of the legislation. Thus, even if SOPA is defeated, it may turn out to be a Pyrrhic victory—opponents may win the battle but may not have gained much as a result."

224 Reader Comments

Yes counterfeiting is bad but Channel is fooling itself if it thinks this will result in a revenue boost for them. The only people who buy counterfeit luxury goods are those who cannot afford the real thing in the first place. People who can afford them don't buy the counterfeits so they are chasing after a phantom market.

Notice the "being acccused of" in there? That's because there was no actual trial, yet punishment was unconstitionally meted out.

Fortunately for us all, the various state and federal governments disagree with your opinion. A parking ticket, an unpaid commercial debt, and a serial murderer should not be administered and punished using the same process.

How on earth did the judge allow for joinder of all these defendants in one single case, when they clearly have no relation to each other, and many are clearly in disparate jurisdictions? This is some astonishingly poor jurisprudence.

Yeah, remember when Americans had the right to legal representation, and got to confront their accusers and be judged by a jury of their peers?

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google should just overcomply with the request and delist any pages and block all posts that mention Chanel at all. Let's see how Chanel likes disappearing from the Internet.

Yes counterfeiting is bad but Channel is fooling itself if it thinks this will result in a revenue boost for them. The only people who buy counterfeit luxury goods are those who cannot afford the real thing in the first place. People who can afford them don't buy the counterfeits so they are chasing after a phantom market.

And those that buy the counterfeits often aspire to buy the real thing some time in the future.

What's to say in the future that a court won't order you to be de-listed because you wrote something critical of the United States government or for that matter the justice system, both of which richly deserve critical feedback.

Intellectual property these days seems to be an enforcement of the few at the expense of the many and in many cases, the original justifications (ex: an incentive to innovate or create new works) for IP laws offer no justification for what is happening.

Shame on this judge for failing to consider the long term consequences of his actions. Shame on the US justice system and the flawed legal education system. It's actions like these that will accelerate the decline of America - serving special interests without even considering public interest.

yes this is crazy, but for those of you that think this is going to isolate or hurt the the u.s. in ANY way, you are even crazier. take a long look at europe. they're more than ready to jump on the censorship bandwagon (no matter what the e.u. parliment says). france just announced its new plan to censor the internet. the u.k. do it with no real judicial oversite. denmark, finland, and italy all do to some extent. who's really going to object? russia? china?

And how much did the judge(s) get from Chanel for their work? Are the sites even located in the U.S.? Are the sites really selling "fakes" or are they calling it "reproductions"?

Just shows they don't need the SOPA act; all they need is a judge or two that needs money.

Once people get used to this in the name of "protection" the next logical step is to start blocking and seizing domains of websites that criticize the U.S. government or its' agencies.

The U.S. government is becoming so hypocritical that it would be funny if it wasn't so dirty. We point fingers and criticize the governments of Iran, China, North Korea, etc. for censoring the internet then we turn around and do exactly the same thing ourselves.

Next we will see religious groups coming up with some "commercial" reason why, for example, providing sex education is illegal and must be seized.

Notice the "being acccused of" in there? That's because there was no actual trial, yet punishment was unconstitionally meted out.

If they actually DID make this criminal law, the whole copyright proceeding would grind to a halt because they will need proof beyond reasonable doubt. The article certainly doesn't make it sound like they had that kind of evidence.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google should just overcomply with the request and delist any pages and block all posts that mention Chanel at all. Let's see how Chanel likes disappearing from the Internet.

Google would be to blame only if google are taking money from forgers selling fake goods through google adwords in any other respect google is an innocent party. Imagine you set up a website you would submit it to as many websites and search engines as you could find and as everyone knows google the majority would see google as first choice. However we(the general public) would have no problem at all with any site showing kiddie porn being delisted from google(neither would google if it remembers its own company motto) so why not those selling fake goods. If fake goods appear high in the search rankings its either because they gamed the system or because the public genuinely likes them better than the other sites and no wonder when the legal sites charge for stuff pirates give away free or steeply discounted.

Does anybody RTFA's any more?

Quote:

How were the sites investigated? For the most recent batch of names, Chanel hired a Nevada investigator to order from three of the 228 sites in question. When the orders arrived, they were reviewed by a Chanel official and declared counterfeit. The other 225 sites were seized based on a Chanel anti-counterfeiting specialist browsing the Web.

From the article, 3 sites were actually investigated. The other 225 were pulled just because somebody browsed the web, without even ordering a sample and verifying Chanel's trademarked name was applied to the knockoffs. The sites were pulled without any reason or verification of wrong doing. The sites' operators didn't even get a chance to respond till after they had their domains yanked!

"(A recent November 14 order went after an additional 228 sites; none had a chance to contest the request until after it was approved and the names had been seized.)"

It seems baseless to order "de-listing" of the URL if the domain name has been seized and safely under control at GoDaddy. It's sort of like a judge ordering that someone hand you title to a car but prohibiting anyone from telling you where it is parked (except that they can still point to it if you ask indirectly).

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google should just overcomply with the request and delist any pages and block all posts that mention Chanel at all. Let's see how Chanel likes disappearing from the Internet.

Dear you all, a judge in Neveda does not equal all of the United States. Hopefully someone will fight this and appeal these decisions; then you can panic about what USians are doing to the rest of the world.

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Bing, Yahoo, and Google should just overcomply with the request and delist any pages and block all posts that mention Chanel at all. Let's see how Chanel likes disappearing from the Internet.

This I like!

Agreed. That would be hilarious, and I completely support this idea.

OccupyChanel!

Yeah! Let's buy all the Chanel we can get our hands on and horde it! So no one can buy them anymore!!!

"In his decision in the 1997 case State Oil Co. v. Khan, Posner wrote that a ruling 1968 antitrust precedent set by the Supreme Court was "moth-eaten", "wobbly", and "unsound".[3] Nevertheless, he abided by the previous decision with his ruling.[3] The Supreme Court granted certiorari and overturned the 1968 ruling unanimously; Sandra Day O'Connor wrote the opinion and spoke positively of both Posner's criticism and his decision to abide by the ruling until the Court decided to change it."

What's this government going to do when non-US DNS/proxy servers are being used by US citizens who actually understand how the internet actually does work? What is this judge going to do...make using "ping" or or the the actual IP address a capital offense?

Don't kid yourself... this is nothing less than an exercise in shutting down the web. Chanel is just a test suit excuse. That is obvious by the cavalier way the Judge ignored the 1st and 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th Amendments to the Bill of Right. He might just as well declared the entire Bill of Rights unconstitutional while he was at it.

Is it any wonder why people no longer have any respect for our 3 branches of government? ALL of them appear to be bought and paid corporate subsidiaries.

Hell yes.If Ars got removed from the internets for someone posting something like that I would weep with joy.

The MAFIAA/Chanel/Some other uppity dinosaur gets a Conde Nast website pulled from the Internet without due process because of a post by a commenter.

Think about this.

Think some more.

Do you really understand the repercussions of this? It could be the single best thing that could possibly happen to push back against the steady encroachment of US.gov control over our beloved tubes.

I promise you that if someone pulled Ars Technica for a comment, this whole thing would enter the public conciousness in a very big way. And we would finally have some resolution on the issue. Either the US is to be cut off from the net by building itself a Great Firewall - from behind which no companies excepting these old dinosaurs are going to want to do business - or we will get a saner appraoch to internet governance. And it will happen quickly.

If the US decides publically and formally that they are going to build a legal Great Firewall around the US, then the entire rest of the world will simply treat them as damage and move on.

Either way, I win. I either get a bunch of US legislation that enables me buy from US companies I like again, or US.gov drives all digital investment elsewhere in a very big way.

I am ready to "just say no" to the US internet. Who do I sign up with to use a non-North-American-controlled root? Where can I find a good off-continent English language search engine?

Non-UK would be good too…they have a tendency to fold like cheap tents when the US comes a knocking.

If only that were true the uk folds like a piece of paper rather than a cheap tent which took me half an hour to fold into the bag I took it out of. The uk cant even dream of that only the scottish government can get away with that and only when they would of lost a legal case which would have freed the man set up for the lockerbie bomings. One email from the usa and(if it wasnt for the courts) the uk will send any of its citizens to face trial in america for things that might not even be a crime in this country.

The countdown to an alternate DNS hierarchy based outside the US can now begin.

How long before there are court order for US ISPs to block it?

There already is such a thing, except that US legal "eagles" seems to consider non-national TLDs (.com, .org, .net and the rest) as US domains (helped along by the company set to manage them is US based).

The domains you mention (.com, .org, as well as .edu, .mil and .gov) are US domains. It goes back to when the internet started, it was an ARPA project, and the TLDs were assigned to split the ARPA domain. See RFC 920. The RFC included a provision for country based domains using the ISO country codes. It's just that .com is so much easier. You can't have a .gov address if you are not part of the US government, or a .edu if not a US educational institution, but .com became a kind of a free for all, but is US managed. Not arguing the merits of this case, just that US has control over these domains.

"A preliminary injunction, in equity, is an injunction entered by a court prior to a final determination of the merits of a legal case, in order to restrain a party from going forward with a course of conduct or compelling a party to continue with a course of conduct until the case has been decided. If the case is decided against the party that has been enjoined, then the injunction will usually be made permanent. If the case is decided in favor of the party that has been enjoined, the injunction will usually be dissolved or dismissed.

In most courts in the United States, the party seeking the preliminary injunction must demonstrate all four things together:

That there is a substantial likelihood of success on the merits of the case, That they face a substantial threat of irreparable damage or injury if the injunction is not granted, That the balance of harms weighs in favor of the party seeking the preliminary injunction That the grant of an injunction would serve the public interest."

They will have their days in court eventually. If the website involved win later, they have a chance to recover their lost profits, attorneys fee and more by counter-suing Chanel with malicious prosecution.

To me, saying preliminary injunction should only be issued after a full civil jury trial, is like saying that we should never allow criminal suspects to be "detained pending trial" until a verdict by a jury.

To me, saying preliminary injunction should only be issued after a full civil jury trial, is like saying that we should never allow criminal suspects to be "detained pending trial" until a verdict by a jury.

Civil issue on one side, criminal issue on the other. If you can not see the issue with destroying a business that in all likelihood isn't even under your jurisdiction because they are accused of a civil offence, then really you are probably not going to find much purchase here.

We wouldn't be having this discussion if it were a criminal precaution about websites selling snuff films.

On the civil side, a company (or companies) have to potential to possibly miss out on a few sales, with some added minor possible brand name damage. On the criminal side, people are killed, and films of thier executions sold.

That is the difference between civil and criminal. In the civil case, there is no "greater harm to society" in leaving the website up. It is a matter of one individual's rights versus another. In a criminal case, there is very clearly a possible (and critically important) direct harm to society at large in the site being up: the website is accused of either killing people or encouraging others to do so in order to get new content.

This is the difference between a batshit insane seizure, and a reasonable one. Between the [wtf?!?] that just happened here in a civil case and the sort of thing that regularly happens in criminal ones.

The countdown to an alternate DNS hierarchy based outside the US can now begin.

How long before there are court order for US ISPs to block it?

There already is such a thing, except that US legal "eagles" seems to consider non-national TLDs (.com, .org, .net and the rest) as US domains (helped along by the company set to manage them is US based).

The domains you mention (.com, .org, as well as .edu, .mil and .gov) are US domains. It goes back to when the internet started, it was an ARPA project, and the TLDs were assigned to split the ARPA domain. See RFC 920. The RFC included a provision for country based domains using the ISO country codes. It's just that .com is so much easier. You can't have a .gov address if you are not part of the US government, or a .edu if not a US educational institution, but .com became a kind of a free for all, but is US managed. Not arguing the merits of this case, just that US has control over these domains.

My mind is truly boggled that the had the foresight to set up both the national and non-national TLDs at the same time, but not roll the clearly US ones under .US from day one...

The internet is going down the toilet :( I hope they take this back to court. i certainly would support the fight for freedom of the internet. net neutrality, peoples rights, etc. The judge is probably not qualified to make judgement as he is 80 years old i am guess or needs to be re-tested for being a judge.